Dec 30, 2016

Re:Joyce Episode 360 – Courting Couples & Cabbage

Comments

Trying to understand how Father Conmee in reading the breviary, has come to land between these two sections of Psalm 119 exactly (with the finishing of *Res* and the beginning *Sin* -- these being the Latinizations of the two strange Hebrew letters; where we would have to understand that the whole long Psalm was divided up into 22 alphabetically ordered sections, now we more familiarly read by the verse-numbers without the aid of these Hebrew letters, or if we do so at all, only with the aid of, at most, the Anglicized designations "Resh" and "Shin"). Is the breviary of his time exactly prescriptive of reading these sections in tandem and then too has them so precisely designated as to require the holy clergy to be reading them with nones; or is it all something accidental, in the sense that Father Conmee knows he has missed some reading earlier in the day, on account of lady Maxwell's visit, and now has make-up reading to do? Or, is it all just arbitrary on James Joyce's part to land Conmee right on this page, just so he can use the word "sin" for dramatic effect?

Re: # 361A: One-third of Ulysses having moseyed by, something for fellow Bloomsday Daedali to ponder- Surfing about the Internet in search of material leading to an understanding of Joyce's modernist novel, I happened upon a site which insisted that the book ennobles the lives of very ordinary people with Homer's Odyssey as a spectacular backdrop. But is that what Joyce was really up to? Perhaps Joyce invoked Homer's heroic tale in order to belittle modern man, much as Swift or Pope suggested the "moderns" were but dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants- the ancient Greeks and the Romans, much as the Dubliners stories often excoriated the stultified denizens of that town. Witness, for example, with regard to Ulysses, how narrow-minded Mr. Deasy contrasts the wise old King Nestor, how priggishly Stephen stacks up against filial Telemachus, how piddly Bloom seems in comparison with the wily and courageous Odysseus, and how faithless, un-Penelope-like our tempestuous Molly proves.

Or maybe Joyce intended both- depictions which somehow simultaneously ridicule and ennoble the quotidian existence of flawed but wondrous characters! It is interesting in this vein to note that Joyce rejected a religion that magnifies the lives of sinful people in that it lent their actions boundless significance- everlasting damnation or eternal bliss.

William, I find your idea most interesting but I ultimately don't think there was any (or very little) belittling intended. I think your last paragraph veers closer to the point: by actively emphasising how inane or petty the moderns are in comparison to their mythical counterparts - and, indeed, by structuring the novel as "the 10-year Odyssey in 18 hours around one city" - I think he is more likely to be ridiculing the greats. Odysseus' courage and Penelope's loyalty are, on the whole, not credible. They can only be read as archetypes, no matter how well written, and fidelity to them comes at the cost of a realistic notion of humanity.

Yes, isn't it indeed religion - or maybe just the purveyors of such - that tends to encourage people to hold their lives to an impossible standard? The more I read "Ulysses", the more I find to be a (dare I say) cut-and-dried example of Modernism. As modern life has not grown tired of telling us, there are really no Nestors, although Scylla and Charybdis lurk around every turn in the river.

Having said that, I also find fault with the assumption of the website that led you to this comment. I don't think "Homer's Odyssey as a spectacular backdrop" is a worthy statement. The fact that Joyce ultimately chose not to give the Homeric names to the chapters suggests that he wasn't aiming to write a Popeian satire anymore than he was aiming to give the publicity team an easy sell, surely? ("See the Wandering Rocks! Marvel at the delights of Circe's bungalow!") I think Joyce's excoriation in "Dubliners" is aimed more at the folly and deceit of individuals rather than at humanity as a whole, whereas I think "Ulysses" ultimately celebrates our kind.

Whether he was right to do so, 100 years on, is another question altogether.